


it was only ever thus

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 4x04, Angst, Episode Related, Established Relationship, M/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 14:58:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9825488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Two people who love each other enough to let go, in different ways.





	

**Author's Note:**

> An angsty reaction fic to 4x04: beware spoilers! The first section is from Flint's POV and the second section from Silver's.
> 
> Title from Snow Patrol - 'New York'.

**i. one irreplaceable thing**

He says Thomas Hamilton’s name, and you’re wondering why the fuck he’s bringing this up now. He’s asking you if would trade the war to have Thomas back. It’s a question you’ve asked yourself before, plenty of times, a game you like to play to torture yourself on sleepless nights, a game of endless questions burrowing one after another, deeper and deeper into the black earth until you might as well be burying yourself alive. If you could have Thomas back now, would you? What would Thomas even think of you now? Even setting the question aside of how you would feel to see him again, how would Thomas feel? Could he love you? Would he approve of your war?

You’ve played this game so often that you’ve convinced yourself that he would, indeed, think your war is justified, and so that is what you tell Silver. But then Silver persists, insists on getting a proper answer out of you, and you still don’t really understand _why_ he’s asking all this now. To have somebody else ask you these questions that you often ask yourself pierces you all the more sharply. Assume, assume, _assume_. You don’t want to fucking assume. Thomas is dead. But _God_ , you think. Would you? Would you trade the war to make it so that he is alive and before you again? _Would you_? You cannot speak. You think: you would, you would, you would.

And then Silver says, “It is some kind of hell to be forced to choose one irreplaceable thing over another”, and you finally understand. The war and Thomas. You and Madi. He is saying that he doesn’t know which of you he would choose. But he is also saying to you that are irreplaceable to him. Your throat closes up.

He was asking you the wrong question.

You’d throw away the war for Thomas. You were fighting it for him in the first place: if he were truly alive, if the choice was between fighting the war and being with him, of course you would choose the latter. A strange sort of war you would be waging in his name if you wouldn’t fly to his arms in a heartbeat if he were alive. You wouldn’t shed and spill this much blood for him if you didn’t love him, and if he still loved you, if he would have you back—of course you would trade the war for that.

But the war is the war. It is death and destruction, streets piled with dead bodies and pooling crimson. Life over death: you’ve got yourself back to a point where that seems like an easy choice to you again. _Silver_ has got you back to that point.

And that’s it, isn’t it? The war can be traded away. But Silver. Silver. You have to look away from him, because what you are feeling for him right now is too much to bear. If he asked you to choose between him and Thomas, _that_ would be the right question. One irreplaceable thing over another. He is calling you irreplaceable to him, and not acknowledging—not _allowing_ himself to be that to you, too.

You want to say to him that he is irreplaceable. To choose between him and Thomas: _that_ would be an impossible choice. But in this moment, it is too much to admit. And surely he should already know that? Surely you have spent the past few months demonstrating that to him, with every kiss, with every touch? But here he is, and he has declared to you that Madi is where he is at his most vulnerable. Not you, not you, not you.

To say out loud right now that he is irreplaceable to you: you cannot do that. _He_ is where you are at your most vulnerable. All you want is for him to be happy. You think about how you had your hand in his thick curls earlier, how you had tasted metal in his mouth, how his eyes had been bluer than the life-giving sky. You think about the way he looks at Madi, speaks of her, touches her with the desperation of someone holding onto the best thing in his life. You are not the best thing. How could you be? You are shadow and smoke, gunfire and open wounds. You are glad he found something better than you.

You will do whatever necessary to keep him safe. To keep her safe, too, for him.

And he will make the choice necessary to keep himself safe, and that is all that matters. You trust him to do that.

* * *

**ii. trust me**

“Trust me,” he says, and you watch as he drops his pistol and his sword, as he steps through the gate, as he stands on the other side of it looking at you through the bars.

“Trust me,” he says, and all you can think about is the darkness of the forest all around you, and you asking for his last secret and him giving it to you, proffering his own gleaming soul to you with both hands. Telling you that this entire war is for love: that that is how much he is capable of loving someone. And then when you theorised that you might be his end, he shrugged it off and looked you in the eye and grinned, suggesting that he might love you so much, too.

“Trust me,” he says, and all you can think about is the first time he undressed in front of you, all his dark attire cast aside, his boots and jacket and shirt and trousers, until he was utterly naked, his pale skin an undiscovered coastline, a bay of sun-warmed sand. The first time he kissed you, his mouth a sweet cove, the safest place you have ever known, secluding you from the rest of the world and enwrapping you in a quiet calm. The first time he let you tie him up, and though the ropes were around his wrists, you felt as you tied them that you were binding yourself to him, a ship’s cables mooring you to the white shore of him, and you wanted no other harbour than this.

“Trust me,” he says, and all you can think about is the first time you woke up beside him, and he was still asleep, the milky light of dawn washing over him and making him look so much younger, his heart thudding slowly in his bare chest where your hand lay over it, keeping him alive, alive. The night before, you had felt that heartbeat pounding in his throat, when you squeezed your hand around it and he let you, let you plunge into the sea of his body and take him, all of him.

“Trust me,” he says, and all you can think about is how whenever you worried you would be his end, he would hush you with a kiss, and once, he murmured, “Even so I’d choose this,” and your own heart stopped still in your ribcage.

“Trust me,” he says, and all you can think about is how when you saw him after you spent the night with Madi for the first time, and you told him, he only smiled, his eyes squinting in the sun, and said, “You look happy.” How when you tried to reassure him that it didn’t change anything between you and him, he nodded and said, “I didn’t think it would.”

“Trust me,” he says, and all you can think about is earlier, standing in front of the entrance to the fort, finally letting him know what happened with Billy. Implying to him that you _are_ concerned that he would prove to be Madi’s end, that you are unsure of what this means for you and him, that you are frightened that if it ever comes down to choosing one over the other, you don’t have a clue what you would choose. That you hope it doesn’t come to that. And he wasn’t upset that you didn’t indicate that you would choose him. He wasn’t afraid. He accepted it, and believed in you, and he was almost smiling when he said, “I suppose the good news is that’s how we finally know we’re getting somewhere interesting,” and you felt like you were holding his heartbeat in your hands all over again.

“Trust me,” he says, and all you can think about is how when you had managed to get _one moment_ alone with him recently, you’d almost folded, almost broken down in tears while you kissed him and touched his soft, soft beard. You’d said, “I’m new to this whole ‘loving two people at the same time’ thing. Christ, I’m new to this whole _love_ thing. Is it really possible that I’m not going to fuck this up?” And he had stroked your cheek and kissed your forehead and whispered, “I trust you.” 

“Trust me,” he says, and of course. Of _course_ you can do nothing else, everything within you crumbling to dust as you hear the clang of his weapons hitting the ground and the creak of the gate swinging open then shut, and you see his green eyes looking at you from the other side, wondering what you are thinking now.


End file.
